Outdoor cooking has progressed from open wood camp fires to sophisticated gas barbecues. Gas barbecues offer quick heating using natural gas fuel, such as bottled liquified propane, easily adjustable heat controls, and avoid the need for cumbersome and messy wood or charcoal supplies. Modern outdoor barbecues include one or more burners positioned across a bottom of an enclosure with a horizontal grill or griddle positioned across the top of the enclosure. Ceramic bricks are heated by the burners, replacing conventional combustible charcoal briquettes. One or more manually operable controls are provided for regulating gas supply to the burners to adjust cooking temperature of food stuffs to be cooked on the overlying grill or griddle.
Commercially available outdoor barbecues are conventionally mounted in a metal housing heated to high temperatures by the barbecue when it is operating. Because of the high temperatures generated by the burners, the barbecue must be spaced from easily combusted objects, made of, e.g., wood, and therefore cannot be mounted in a wooden housing or support.
Increasingly modern homes include extensive outdoor structures, in the form of a wooden patio or deck, adjoining a residence. Meals are frequently cooked on these structures on stand-alone portable barbecues or grills. Because the metal housings of portable barbecues often reach high temperatures, incidental human contact with the housing is to be avoided. Additionally, the portable barbecue may aesthetically detract from the outdoor environment and be visually incompatible with the surrounding wooden structure, as well as the wooden tables and benches frequently located thereon.
Hence it is desirable to mount the barbecue in a wooden structure on a patio or deck. However, because of the high temperatures produced by the barbecue, it is hazardous and therefore against many building codes to install the barbecue so it contacts a wooden structure of a deck or patio.
Accordingly, an object of the invention is to provide a new and improved article for mounting an outdoor barbecue in a wooden structure without causing combustion of the wooden structure.
Another object of the invention is to provide a thermal insulating liner to prevent contact of a combustible support with high temperature portions of a barbecue.
Still another object of the invention is to provide a thermal insulating liner for a barbecue, wherein the liner provides required clearances from surrounding combustible structures and objects to meet or exceed building code safety requirements for enabling installation of the barbecue into a combustible outdoor structure.